The Canvas of His Back
by Annie Sewell-Jennings
Summary: In the afterglow, there is nothing but sweetness. Buffy/Spike


TITLE: "The Canvas of His Back (1/1)"  
AUTHOR: Annie Sewell-Jennings  
E-MAIL: auralissa@aol.com  
SUMMARY: In the afterglow, there is nothing but sweetness.   
Buffy/Spike  
SPOILERS: Post-"Listening to Fear"  
RATING: NC-17  
DISTRIBUTION: My site,   
http://geocities.com/anniesjennings/index.html, and to wherever   
else it is wanted providing permission is requested prior to   
archival. That's not too much to ask, now is it?  
DISCLAIMER: The characters of Buffy and Spike are the property of   
Mutant Enemy Productions and Joss Whedon, and FOX is not good   
enough to claim them. The song is the property of Joni Mitchell,   
and its title is "A Case of You" from the classic "Blue" LP.  
AUTHOR'S NOTES: Nothing more than some sweet pillow talk and mild   
angst, but then again, everything on "Buffy" is but bittersweet,   
isn't it? Thanks to Heather for beta-reading this story as she  
always does. She is a goddess, you know. :)  
  
*****  
  
The Canvas of His Back  
  
*****  
  
"Oh, I am a lonely painter  
I live in a box of paints  
I'm frightened by the devil  
And I'm drawn to those ones that ain't afraid  
I remember that time you told me  
'Love is touching souls', well, surely you touched mine  
Cause part of you pours out of me  
In these lines from time to time  
Oh, you're in my blood like holy wine  
You taste so bitter and so sweet  
Oh, I could drink a case of you  
And still, I'd be on my feet  
I would still be on my feet"  
--Joni Mitchell  
  
*****  
  
In the aftermath of it all, as the sun began to crown the horizon   
through the thick walls of their hideaway, past the towering oak   
trees which were beginning to shed their greenery in favor for   
flames, she sketched on the canvas of his back her dreams.  
  
She once thought of his skin as being silvery, but had learned   
that it was a different breed of metal. It was the purity of   
white gold stretched across muscle and sinew, rich and warmed by   
her body and fading lust. It was dappled by the candles that   
burned around their bed, warmed by the thickness of fire and   
smelled of matches, cigarettes, salty sweat and had a hint of her   
own aroma mingled in with all that was his. Strong, lean   
shoulderblades were decorated by the warmth of the candles,   
muscles pouring across his back underneath a thick, rich canvas   
of skin, and she let her finger draw obscure and meaningless   
symbols across his skin as he lingered between waking and   
slumber.  
  
But to Buffy, they weren't so meaningless and obscure. They were   
the figures and blueprints of her anguish, taking shape and   
substance in the whispers of her fingertip as it danced across   
his slender back. One sliding line between his shoulders was the   
place where she had touched her mother when her mother made her   
promise to keep Dawn. A gentle cupping of his neck; where she had   
cradled Dawn and comforted her in the aftermath of their mother's   
surgery. And here, this hollow of his back, the small of it,   
where she wished he could touch her in public without questions   
or chaos.  
  
But instead, Buffy was relegated to taking comfort only in his   
bed, never in the eyes of the rest of the world. Understanding,   
for this was never sought from anyone other than him, and he gave   
it to her willingly and without strings. He was all that she had   
right now, her anchor in the most unlikely of places, lit by a   
thousand burning candles and covered in the smell of incense and   
lingering sex.  
  
She could only be whole in Spike's bed.  
  
Soft, coal-colored lashes closed over her eyes as she nestled   
into him, spooning him with the small frailty of her body,   
pressing her naked, warm breasts against the slender length of   
his back and wrapping her arms around him. It pained her to only   
be able to feel this way in the hours between dusk and dawn, the   
stolen shadows of the nighttime, when she could leave her mother   
at home and walk when the world was asleep. While slumber   
overtook the town, she walked the world and found her heaven   
here.  
  
"Did you ever kiss a woman in daylight?" she had asked him once,   
right after the first time, when she had cupped his face in her   
hands and looked at him in the gleaning of midnight. And all that   
Spike had done in return was shake his head and steal another   
kiss from her, take another drink of her mouth when the nighttime   
was lush and ripe, like a plum that only they could truly taste.  
  
Language for them was unusual, as it consisted of words that   
neither of them had ever confessed to anyone else and could never   
admit without shame or pressure. Words were accompanied by   
gestures, caresses and kisses, and so their vernacular was more   
than mere vocabulary. It was essential and erotic, quiet and   
passionate, like harsh rain. And Buffy was beginning to discover   
that it was more necessary to breathe out her inhibitions and   
fears in this form of spoken word and sex rather than any other   
manner. English was no longer her native language; this had   
replaced it.  
  
The candlelight flickered from all around the room, wax dripping   
down slender colored sticks and melding onto the cement as the   
evidence of their existence. Slender, shining pools of hardened   
wax in a multitude of colors remained around the cold walls of   
his home, and Spike eyed them with unfathomable longing. These   
scars of wax, these slender masses, was all that he had to keep   
of her. They existed in the shadows, breathed in water, made fire   
in winter where no one else could see, and in the hours where   
light shone from the sky and she was gone, he was nothing more   
than a shell of who he was.  
  
Without her, he was air.  
  
Slender fingers continued their dance down his back, the palm of   
her hand catching on the simple cotton sheets that they had   
decorated their bed in. No more crimson, nothing that would ever   
connote any past lovers or wrench their history from the books   
where it had been miserably recorded. Instead they made love in   
thick vanilla cotton and underneath whorls of green ivy. Marble   
angels turned their heads down onto them when they made love,   
these statues decorating his crypt protecting them. He had   
confessed one of his only lines of poetry to her when she   
mentioned that one night:   
  
"We're so beautiful that even the angels become voyeurs."  
  
Laughter had poured from her throat, passionate and lovestruck,   
and they had made love again, the sheets smelling of smoke, sex,   
and the shadows in which they were forced to exist.  
  
Buffy's childlike hands scaled the distance of his back, and   
Spike tried to transfer the etchings that she made onto his skin   
into something sensible, and all that he could transcribe was   
grief. He accepted her agony, took in her torment, and confessed   
his own failures and trials to her. Every one of their   
insecurities existed in this small chamber where the angels   
guarded them from their stone carvings. This was their Pandora's   
Box, where they opened up all dangers and stored them away for   
safekeeping.  
  
Yet their coupling wasn't merely forged out of shared misery. In   
the afterglow, when the sweat had not yet faded and the passion   
still pumped through their veins, they made love with words and   
he became a poet again.  
  
"This is my favorite part of your body," Buffy said from behind   
him, her voice muted with surfacing sleepiness and honeyed by   
warmth. "I love your back."  
  
A smile spread across his face, and Spike was once again startled   
by how he smiled when he was with her. He smiled without bitter   
irony, without predatory sexuality, and without anger or danger.   
Instead, it was a simpler smile, one that made his body feel   
alive, one inspired by her and her alone. Gracefully, he turned   
his head to look at her, laying flat on his belly so that she   
could keep his back. "It's yours then," he said. "I'm giving it   
to you."  
  
The smile that she gave him was divine, absent of shyness or   
uncertainty. "Can I put a flag in it and claim it as mine?" she   
asked mischievously, and Spike chuckled.  
  
"Only if I can do the same to this," he said, and he traced a   
finger down her stomach. She was a Boticelli angel, perfection   
in copper skin lit by a thousand silent candles, her hair pouring   
over her breasts in curls of molten honey. But the place that he   
loved on her was the slight curve of her belly, the sweet swell   
that was full and ripe, curvaceous and inviting, like something   
out of a portrait painted in oils. "This is my favorite part of   
your body, you see. This curve, right here."  
  
Small, capable fingers closed over his larger, callused palm, and   
she warmed his cool hand as it laid there, a finger dipping into   
the hollow of her navel. "I give it to you," she said. "Now we   
own pieces of each other. I have a contract to your back, and I   
give you the deed to my belly."  
  
Sooty lashes closed over his smoldering blue eyes as he   
peacefully closed them, still cupping her belly like it was   
something precious, and she moved closer to him, unable to lose   
contact with the slender length of his body. "You know, I've   
never had a lover like you before," Buffy said. "You're   
completely unique."  
  
The scarred eyebrow arched, the eyebrow that carried the evidence   
of a dance with a past Slayer, one before her. "How so?" Spike   
asked, and Buffy turned on her side, resuming her absent doodling   
on his back.  
  
"I was speaking of the physical; we both know how different you   
are from everyone else as far as personality goes," Buffy said,   
her voice hushed and slightly ragged, like it had been scratched   
by sandpaper. "You're a lynx where other men were bears. Slender,   
lean, sinuous... An economical creature with nothing to spare.   
You're a masterpiece." And she continued to create a self-  
portrait on his back, touching the place between the wings of his   
shoulderblades. "You don't make me feel so small."  
  
Their mouths met in a kiss, and Spike tasted himself on her as   
she caressed his lips with the tip of her hot little tongue. A   
breeze of teeth across the silk of his lower lip and he was hers,   
the whole and worth of him, all buttings and boundings. When he   
opened his eyes, he saw hers, those eyes that were as clear and   
honest as the waters of the Gulf of Mexico, where he had once   
prowled the shores seeking answers that were only found in her   
arms.  
  
And in her eyes, he found himself. Saw himself clearly through   
her vision and understanding, saw the man who existed under the   
needs and desires of a vampire. Saw that not all of him had died   
under Drusilla's kiss and thirst, and saw that he could never   
have her in sunlight. The darkness between twilight and sunrise   
was theirs though, and when the moon crowned the sky and dusted   
it with stars, this bed was their paradise and confessional. "I   
can see my reflection in you," Spike confessed, and Buffy closed   
her eyes, taking her breath and holding it.  
  
What sort of reflection must his eyes cast? How much of her   
existed in this place, hiding in the piles of wax that clung to   
the cement or carved into the face of their voyeuristic angels?   
How much of herself had become a part of him as well, poured into   
his flesh and his fingers? And in return, how much of him now   
rested inside the cradle of her hips or the arch of her eyebrow?  
  
And yet when she opened her eyes and looked into his, all that   
she found was herself. Whole, without fracture of fragmentation,   
exhaling relief and quiet peace onto his mouth as she kissed him   
underneath a veil of candlelight. He was all that she could   
touch, all that she could trust, and in this ivy-covered bed was   
the place where she could find refuge from all of reality. The   
world slumbered as she fought for consciousness, as she let the   
hours pass and prayed that the sun wouldn't rise.  
  
For when the sun surfaced from its nightly slumber, her stolen   
hours in his arms would be over, and the world would scream for   
her again. The myriad monsters of otherworldly origins would claw   
at her family and friends, and she would be forced to protect   
them. The frailty of her mother's sanity and health would cling   
to her, and her never-sister would beg for comfort and solace   
while never offering similar restitution for her "older sister".   
And there would be Riley, accusing and mediocre, descending into   
shadows that she didn't understand and pleading for her time.  
  
But in here, there were no demands, no martyrdom, no misery. When   
the world wore her thin and drank at her lifeblood, she came here   
and was made whole. Survival was based now on the necessity of   
this unusual and shadowed love, forbidden by the rules of the   
world and yet beloved by sculpted angels.  
  
Fingertips that were lacquered in black nail polish cupped the   
curve of her belly that was now his property, and he remained in   
limbo between sleep and waking, wishing that they could claim all   
the hours in the world for this. It was royally unfair that they   
only existed in the nighttime, and that the rest of time ate at   
their spirits and destroyed them from the inside out. And to   
watch the shadows ring her eyes, to see the weight fall from her   
body, he feared that someday the daylight would break her beyond   
the point of his repair.  
  
One by one, the candles began to extinguish, and frail ribbons of   
smoke whispered their way to the ceiling, crowning the marble and   
stone angels with halos made of sandalwood and mulberry. The door   
was outlined in the light of morning, and the melody of birds   
accompanied the sound of her soft breathing. Daylight was coming,   
stealing their moments away, and Buffy nestled her cheek against   
his shoulder, terrified of all that could be destroyed today.  
  
"You know, it's not quite fair," she decided, touching the   
gleaning fork of scar tissue that forced a jagged line of pale   
skin across his eyebrow. "You have no souvenir of me the way you   
do the other Slayers, like a scar or a jacket."  
  
Spike smiled, and she treasured his smile like it had cost a   
thousand gold doubloons. When he smiled, he was utterly charming,   
beautiful and enchanting. "I do have a souvenir of you," he said,   
and his finger trailed down her stomach again, making her shiver   
with heat and the ghost of tired arousal. "I have the curve of   
your belly, and my back will always belong to you."  
  
With that, he gave her a kiss, turned on his side so that she was   
shielded by the arch of the back that she had claimed, and fell   
asleep as the candles began to die.  
  
And so she resumed etching out her dreams, her fears, her   
anxieties and her uncertainties in a portrait painted on the   
canvas of his back, and the angels watched her from above.  
  
*****  
  
(end)  
  
*****  
  
Sappy? Perhaps. But it's what came to mind. So send me some   
feedback at auralissa@aol.com if you liked it. :-)  
  
*****  



End file.
